Reducing the power consumption in electronic circuits is often an important aspect of circuit design, more so when such electronic circuits are incorporated into integrated circuits. Designers elect to reduce power consumption in various ways depending upon the nature of the electronic circuitry being designed. In some cases, a particular materials technology such as complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology can provide an advantage in terms of a lower level of power consumption in comparison to another material technology such as bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) technology. However, selecting CMOS technology over BiCMOS technology solely on the basis of reducing power consumption in an electronic circuit does not constitute a universal solution due to additional factors that should be taken into consideration in selecting the materials technology. For example, higher mask costs, poorer noise performance, and speed limitations of CMOS technology in comparison to BiCMOS technology, can render CMOS technology unsuitable for some types of high speed electronic circuits such as, for example, a data retiming circuit designed to operate at radio frequency (RF) rates. Consequently, in some cases, a designer may opt to forgo the use of CMOS technology and instead select a faster but more power-hungry technology such as BiCMOS in order to achieve satisfactory high speed circuit performance. While the use of a more power-hungry technology may be justified in some such cases, it may be unnecessary in some others where alternative solutions can exist.
Furthermore, in some cases, irrespective of the material that is selected, a circuit that is optimized solely on the basis of performance may include certain elements that incur unnecessary voltage drops that lead to a larger voltage overhead requirement upon the power supply. It is desirable that at least a part of this larger overhead be reduced or eliminated in order to provide a more power efficient solution.